Update..FINALLY!

joansjones — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 16:55:25 +0000

I haven’t written on this blog for way to long. I think it might be time that I make some sort of update for any of those who are still frequenting this ol’blogo.

Things have been good and busy over here in Chicago! First off, I started working at a bar! Getting tips and our hourly pay is way more than Texas, so I’m pretty happy with work and the money I’ve been making. YAY!

Here’s what I wear!

And the awesome jersey I scored for football Sundays! GO BEARS!!

Just a slow day at work. I like to take pictures of random stuff while I wait around for tables.

For halloween, me and Tony had a hard time deciding what to wear, both of us wanting to go matching, so after a long head ache in the halloween store we finally decided VAMPIRES. Random, I know. But it was the only “matching” set we could find in the packed store. We had to wait in line to buy our costume, for literally 30 minutes!! We celebrated halloween with some friends and ended up having a good time, YAY!! WOOHOOO!! ………..

After some quick make-up, we ended up looking like THIS!!! Yes, we were sexy…

We had thanksgiving with some friends. Tony made an amazing turduken and it tasted delish!!! I was able to contribute with my mad baking skills and created an awesome pumpkin pie, and pumpkin spiced rolls. It was a winning situation for everyone because there were hardly any left overs.

Our thanksgiving dinner….very very delish!

Chicken inside a duck, inside a TURKEY!! WITH STUFFING!!

My pumpkin spiced rolls…it was pretty fun to make. I always wondered how to make it look like that.

Shaping the cake before putting the icing inside of it

The roll cake wrapped and ready to be cut!!

The making of my pumpkin pie. I put extra effort into this one, since I always had problems with the pie crust, I made sure my butter was frozen, and I purchased a pie cutting device so I didn’t have to use my fingers. To top it off, the marble counter made it extra easy to keep the crust nice and cold throughout the whole process. It turned out GREAT!

I looooooove our oven. Electric oven, with a window, and light inside….what more can I ask for?

We haven’t gotten our christmas tree yet, but hopefully this Sunday we will be able to pick our own tree, cut it down and take it home to decorate. I can’t wait to decorate it and make it look glorious. It’s almost time to buy the prezzies and send them off the family…yay! And count down till my birthday is taking its sweet time. I can’t wait for it, 21 will be a good year. Oh yea!

And it snowed today!!!

Birthday Boy

joansjones — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 04:35:26 +0000

It was Tony’s birthday on the 22nd, so we decided to go to lucky monk (AGAIN) and invited some of our friends who also loved this place as much as we did. We had an amazing time eating out with everyone, enjoyed some house brewed beer, celebrated a lucky monk birthday for Tony, and had a great time.

We got to use our new 35mm F/1.8 baby. The restaurant had some intense lighting situation but other than that, most of these photos came out nice…

We captured Jade, speaking to God during our meal….it was like he saw his face….(real touching time for all of us)

Michael and Michelle, looking shnazzy and fancy..

Me and the girls..

Me and tony stealing some quick laughs

He just might tell me to take down this photo…but before he does, I’m gonna leave it up here for as long as I can cuz I really like this photo!! I told him I wanted to frame it and put it up on our wall, his face is too priceless to be unnoticed in our room.

My sweet boy turned 26!!! I love you so much baby! I hope you had a happy birthday. KISSYS!

(I apologize for the photos being so small when you click on them..I dunno what happened and I’m falling asleep, so I’ll fix later)

The Lucky Monk

joansjones — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 17:07:08 +0000

We went out to eat for dinner the other night and landed on a glorious deck over looking a small fountain and a sunset. We were just tripping out on everything that this restaurant had. It looked like the expensive type when we walked in, but after taking a look at the menu, everything turned out to be cheaper than regular restaurants (like Outback and…most likely apple bee’s and stuff like that.) We were having a difficulty choosing pizza or burgers, but with the help of our hefty server, we choose burgers. Their beef was grounded there so it was fresher than regular burgers…glorious. Had a side of french fries, pickle fries, and a ranch-chipotle dip (OHHHHHH WOW!!!!). But before all of this happened, we ordered the whipped goat cheese (goat cheese, tomatoe fondue, and garlic oil crostini….AND FRESH BASIL!!!) They had their own brewed beer and Tony ordered this tritica weiss beer. On their website, they wrote an explanation of it, “Our special weiss beer is a real unfiltered, cloudy German wheat ale with spicy banana and bread flavors and a slight caramel finish” and yeah it was good. It had this banana taste to it, it was pretty weird! You’d expect a pint of beer at a restaurant like this, WITH their own brewed beer to be expensive….nooo! It was on special for 3 dollars. And seriously, even their lemonade tasted like heaven! Everything was all extremely amazing. It was all around perfect and exactly what we wanted to end our day. I’m serious…I’m not trying to promote these guys and be all corny, this restaurant was amazingly good I recommend everyone to try it out.

Check out their website!!

Memorial Day Weekend

joansjones — Mon, 30 May 2011 00:14:05 +0000

Its memorial day weekend and we’ve been stuck in doors due to extremely weird weather. We were hoping to have some fun bbq time at the beach, probably soak up some sun and enjoy some spring warmth, but nope. This rain has been nothing but trouble!!! All it’s making me want to do is sleep sleep and watch movies. And that’s exactly what we’ve been doing…quite fun actually, hee hee. Tomorrow is the last day that I get to keep Tony around, then he’s back to working. (argh) Anyways, just thought I should post something up here for the heck of it.

Here’s our living room!!!!

When it’s clean, it actually looks like this! Cozy and warm, quite nice.

Kabuki and Apartment

joansjones — Fri, 20 May 2011 16:52:48 +0000

Last night we went to a Japanese steak house/sushi bar for Micheals (Tony’s brother) birthday. Had some great fun watching the chief do his stuff on the grill. (took some videos too and will try to upload later!) He did some amazing stuff, threw some shrimp in peoples mouths with his spatula, haha…pretty cool! I ordered some sashimi and shared the joys of yummy-ness with Tony. Anyways, here are some photos…

Tony, me and Michael.

Our hero

Stacked up some onion rings, put oil inside and lit it up. The whole restaurant sang happy birthday and the onion cake was pretty intense!

Tada!!!

Some of the boys waiting for the food

Looking kinda funky…

Anyways. Those are all the photos I have on me right now. Haven’t been going too photo crazy these days like I’m supposed to. I finally got settled in the apartment, been spending most of my time at home, cleaning up the place and making sure everything is in tip top shape for everyone to live in. Tony’s been working like a hardcore beast so I miss him through out the day sometimes, but not as much as I used to (thank god.) I’m getting all my things together onto his desktop so that I can start up some web designing. I’m loving this monitor, I feel like I can finally see!!! Hopefully I will make significant progress in this little part of my life. Been wanting it to take off for sometime but things were always getting in the way, so we’ll see how it goes! Umm….the area I live in is great! (found a picture of the apartment that we live in on the internet…)

We live on the first floor, and it’s pretty cozy! The neighborhood is way beyond peaceful. On a daily basis we see ducks strolling around on our lawn, some occasional geese taking their time, chillin in the sun….no big D! haha! It’s pretty nice. The weather is starting to shape up and get into its proper “spring-form”. It is a bit humid compared to Texas, my hair goes a bit crazy sometimes…just like it did in Japan, but nothing AS bad. Oh! I just signed up at our close-by gym and we did our first workout together. We both did the same workouts and are currently suffering the wrath of intense muscle-aches. But we do believe that we will achieve our sexy-body goal so…. WATCH OUT!! haha. It’s weird that it hasn’t been a week yet, feels like I’ve been here for awhile already, but it’s only been 5 days or so. Pretty cool! Anyways, that’s about all there is for now. See ya!!!

Finals!

joansjones — Wed, 11 May 2011 04:57:35 +0000

I’ve got my last exam tomorrow. It’ll be a lovely essay for two hours….I swear, this class has been nothing but a headache, both class assignments and the teacher. Unlike my other ones: my arabic math teacher who likes to laugh at his own jokes, my education teacher who is way too calm for her own good, my reading teacher who ended our class with the sweetest good bye speech, “I loved teaching this class, I will miss each one of you and if you ever want to talk you know where my office is, I’m always there for you” awww!!!, but english…forget it!!!!

I went to a Tiesto rave the other day, it was way beyond what I imagined. I was a little disappointed in the VIP section that we got, but towards the end it turned out to be a great success and totally worth it. So stay tuned for some photos and bad quality vids…you know you want to see it!!!

I gotta get some sleep in preparation for tomorrow (my last day of school….YESSS!) after that is done, it is full sway packing to move in with my horribly handsome boyfriend….

*Joan just fainted*

Recently

joansjones — Thu, 05 May 2011 01:48:21 +0000

Hellooo!!! I’m alive. I just went through one of those tummy attacks I’ve been getting for the past few months. It marked the 6th time for me to go through that pain…it was rough. But I went through it like a champ, rewarded myself to lots of soup to fill my empty stomach. I’ve been watching my diet a lot more than before. Been on hold for overly tasteful foods and trying my hardest to eat mild stuff like a pro. It’s quite difficult especially when I’ve always been in love with spicy foods, salty things, and all those dishes that defines “goodness”. I haven’t touched coffee in three days, my head ache has been hard to bear but nothing that a solid early sleep every day won’t solve. Other than the sacrifices I have to make, I’ll survive.

I took my very first final exam. It seemed easy, I just hope I got a nice grade from it. Next week officially marks “finals week” but our Reading teacher wanted to give us all a chance to see if we were able to pass this test, and to those who did, don’t have to take the second one that she’ll be giving during finals week. I’ll get to see how I did tomorrow, sooo…fingers crossed!!

That final essay I thought would be the end of this long and torturous English class turned out to be the SECOND last. Our English teacher wants us to write another essay in the classroom as a final exam (which would be the 5th essay I’ve written since the beginning of the semester) DEAR LORD!! I’ve never written so much in my LIFE!!!

But all that to say, things are moving a long fast and beautifully. I’m going to see my boyfriend next Saturday (I love the sound of that) so I’m hoping for some fun and happy times. He’ll definitely be a rewarding shiner prize from all this school stuff I’ve been having to go through. *sigh*

Hair and stuff

joansjones — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 00:01:21 +0000

I’ve been neglecting my blog for way too long, I’ve decided that it needed some Joan-attention to get its energy boosted. (kinda like an energy drink…..or like a NOS that I just drank…..raaaaaaah!!!!!!)

I’m off to make some balloons in a couple of hours, so I thought I’d squeeze in some blogging time, and hopefully have another hour to finish up my power point that I have to make for my English class. (DISLIKE!!!) This semester is coming close to an end and I seriously cannot wait. I’ve already got my final essay due on Monday, the one and most important essay that will hopefully give me a nice and beautiful score. The topic that I choose is Obesity in Texas. Had to stay in the “texas” category, and I thought obesity would be the most interesting for me. There’s nothing like a persuasive paper written about obesity, to my obese english teacher that’ll get him back from all the times he’s gotten SR with his evolution/anti-christian ways. I hope my paper will change his life.

Aside from the only thing that happens in my life, I got a hair cut. I figured it was time to get a little trim for the summer. Hopefully it’ll keep its proper form for as long as possible and that nothing bad will happen to it. Amen. Here is a photo:

A bit of a weird face I’m making there, and you can hardly see my hair cut. (there’s a photoshop flaw in it that I’m too lazy to fix. see if you can spot it and leave it in the comments. If you get it right you get 10 points) But I just had to post that one because I like the bokeh in it. It kinda overpowered one of my eyes but aside from that…I’m happy that my 3.5 is being used to the fullest, especially with my flash unit. But heres another one that I took with my iPhone:

YaY! I didn’t like what the lady did to my hair too much, so I had to give it a little groom just to style it the way I wanted. I’m telling you, youtube is becoming very useful in times like these. I just learned how to cut bangs the proper way!!! (halleluah much?)

Anyways, I’ve been happily lousing around lately. With school to fill my week days, ballooning to fill my weekends, and a Tony to keep my company on the phone through it all. I am excited to be moving in 3 weeks. My count-down is officially starting. Tony says he’ll only start from the 2nd week in, I guess whatever works for him eh? (hahaha) I’m not looking forward to packing, not ONE bit. Time to go through all the clothes and small trinkets so that they can all fit in three suitcases…..it’s gonna take a miracle.

Photo Day

joansjones — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 05:06:10 +0000

So! Usually I’d be talking up a storm with my Tony boy around this time, but since he’s off doing childish things I’m stuck to updating my blog for everyone else. I guess it was a fine deal. I just hope that movie hes watching was worth sacrificing his Joan Time!!!

Anyways. I don’t have any outstanding news or update that will blow your mind, but I thought of something fun to post on my blog. The other day, I think it might have been a Lazy Thursday (no school, no work….just a lazy day), filled with enough caffeine to last a whole year!!! I don’t know whats been up with me these days, but when I start drinking some energy drink, I hype up into a friggin’ machine and just won’t stop talking or feeling like a super hero. Anyhow, on one of those days…I got this random idea to make it a “Photo Day” for me and Tony. (note: if you’re wondering whats up with these “days” I’ve been making up recently, its my way of exciting myself to do something with my man on the phone or online….I’m telling you, this long-distance stuff needs an extra boost every now and then). Basically, our “Photo Day” consisted of taking random pictures of whatever you wanted, through out the day, and emailing it to the each other. (and Tony had no say in it, I kinda just shoved it into his day and hoped he’d cooperate…lol…..I’m trying hard not to be sexist, but its really hard okay!!!) Anyways, heres one that he took:

LOL! I love it!!! Reminded me of this one night, I was a little too happy from drinking some bottled goodness. We were watching a movie and I randomly grabbed his face and kinda yelled a bit too loud, “I FREAKIN LOVE YOU!!! RAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!” hahahaha, anyways, good times. I give Tony a A+ for this photo. It’s got a lot of meaning and depth in it! (you know what I mean?? lol)

And now onto my collection of photos……

No one was being cooperate with my Photo Day. I was having a hard time taking photos with my sibblings. Thats Katrina, running away from me. That’s me, grumpy about the situation.

My cute little sister who was struggling while I tried to keep her mini face next to mine. She’s off to school soon!!! Got her uniform ready and will be little miss popular before you can even SAY it….YAY!!!

And then I put on some spats so I can do a bit of a workout just to rid that caffeine I was trippin’ on. Kinda getting distracted with taking pictures of my apple bottom boooty……buh buh booty!!!!

And the rest of the photos are random ones I had when me and Alyx went shopping for some new summer clothes. Had to take pictures for my buns…it’s just how we cope with this long-distance stuff……deal with me here!!

Bought this shirt that was on sale. Comfy and summery! Just what I like.

Tony found this dress on a hollister site and really liked it, I found it at the store and thought I’d take a pic to show him what it looked like on me. It was a bit too pricey, and I didn’t like it too much, so it went back on the rack.

I then sneaked a peak in the mens underwear department for a bit and HAD to get them for Tony….it was important.

Anyways, that’s all I have for now. I hope you found that entertaining despite the corniness….ahem! Catch ya laters!!!

Booked…

joansjones — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 00:03:49 +0000

…my flight to Chicago.

Found a good deal for a weekend that I had to grab it before prices go up. Although I do have a feeling that the price will go down in the next couple of days, then I’ll most likely beat myself up and probably die in the process.

ANYWAYS! It’s official and I’m happy. I’m going to be moving in with my Tony in Chicago on May 14th. EXCITING!!!! To live with a man in an apartment, in the same room, in the same bed….never done this before. I pray that we won’t have too many arguments about Joans need for most of the closet space, a new shelf in the bathroom to put all my IMPORTANT and NECESSARY lotions, creams, hair spray in; the need to keep our fridge fully stocked with food on a daily basis, AND the most sensitive one of all: that we’ll both have patience for each other, to learn to move on our sides without having to tell each other that we are snoring too loud. (yeah….we got issues) hee hee!!!

Since leaving Japan and getting here to Texas, it was only going to be a temporary stay with my parents until I could get set up and get an apartment with my sister. But since life is full of surprises, I never expected something like this to happen so quickly. And I’m more than sure that I’m making the right decision. SO! I hope my dear friends and family will only support me and be 100% happy for me. Because I’ll be honest and say, I’m really glad I found a man like him who loves me, who wants to take care of me, whose-sometimes-(hahaha) way too smart for his own good, who shares the same background as me (a former TFI member), and loves Jesus…I don’t know what other good things to say about him that’ll make me anymore luckier than I already am. So go on, share a smile for Joan and give her a high five!